Mass Effect: Accepting Collateral
by PantherX1412
Summary: After activating the Crucible destroys the Reapers, the Geth, and EDI, Shepard opens up to Tali to come to terms with his decision.


The waiting was bad enough, but it was the silence that really unnerved Tali. Between her group and other troops, they had filled about half of the hospital's waiting area. Yet even surrounded by comrades, nobody spoke a word. She sighed and rested her head in her hands, desperate for some kind of update.

As a Quarian, she had rarely been in any hospital not designed for her race and their sensitive immune system, let alone a partially destroyed one on Earth. The battle with the Reapers had been brutal, but somehow Shepard had activated the Crucible super weapon and its energy pulse had destroyed every Reaper in the galaxy – and every other AI as well. The loss of the Geth, creations of her people, so soon after having made peace with them had been hard to swallow. Losing Edi though…

Turning her hooded and helmeted head, she glanced at Joker. The normally talkative and witty human had been incredibly quiet the past few days. His trademark baseball cap was pulled low to hide his eyes as he stared at the floor, and no smile crossed his bearded face. Shepard had encouraged him and EDI, their ship's AI, to pursue a relationship. When the pulse from the Crucible crossed the galaxy, she had stopped reacting – and nothing they had done had brought her back. Tali had spent most of her life working with machines and computers, and she was almost certain that their friend was dead.

The whoosh of a door sliding open caused her and the rest of the room to look up in hope. Most swiftly looked down, but for Tali's group, the sight of a dark-haired human woman in a white jumpsuit brought hope. They leapt to their feet and almost ran across the room to greet Miranda.

A small smile spread across her face as she pronounced, "He's awake, and he should make it." Gasps of joy and relief spread through the squad, and Tali let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Leaning against Garrus, she felt so much of the tension that had built up in the recent days release.

"You say should – how bad is the damage?" Javik questioned. All eyes returned to Miranda as she prepared to respond to the bug-eyed Prothean's query.

She paused for a moment and turned towards a different member of the squad. "Joker, he wants to speak to you for a moment. Go ahead while I explain the situation to everyone else," she said.

Joker looked up in surprise, and glanced towards Tali. While he and Shepard were good friends, everyone thought that the Commander would want to greet his girlfriend first and his friends after. Shrugging in confusion, Tali leaned her head towards the door and watched him proceed.

"What was that about?" James asked as everyone's attention returned to Miranda.

The Australian lifted her hands in an admission of not knowing and explained, "Shepard didn't say why – just that he needed to speak to Joker, and then wanted to see Tali. While they talk I'll bring the rest of you up to speed. Follow me."

The group proceeded into what appeared to be an office set up for Miranda – if it could be called that. One wall was still peppered with bullet holes, and the equipment around the desk was obviously a collection of anything that worked as opposed to any prepared setup.

Miranda pulled up a series of diagrams displaying medical information for a human male that had to be Commander Shepard. "Even with the armor and defenses of the Citadel, it's a miracle that he survived when it fell out of orbit. Even then, the drop, the temperature, and the wounds he had already received were severe," she began.

"But nothing you haven't dealt with before," Liara stated.

"Correct," Miranda responded with a smile. "Project Lazarus brought Shepard back from the dead with much less to work with, and even though I don't have the same technology, team, or resources, he should recover. To do that, we'll begin with some skin grafts for the worst burns, and physical therapy once his bones and tissues mend. I don't expect to need any implants, but we aren't ruling it out if any of his limbs don't heal correctly."

Ashley raised a hand with a frown. When Miranda gestured for her to speak, she hesitated briefly before asking, "What has he said? Is he fine – you know, mentally? We all heard that Anderson was with him but didn't make it out, and we lost a lot of troops even before all of the Geth and EDI."

Miranda paused for a moment before replying, "EDI went down too?" Met by silence and a few nods, she sighed, "I was afraid of that after the Geth all died. I hoped that there was something we didn't know, but still… Shepard hasn't spoken too much. He explained what went down to Admiral Hackett – and me, since that was early in his recovery and I insisted on being present to monitor him. He asked that we not speak about it, and indicated that he would tell everyone once he recovered. But I think that he's still trying to make sense of some of it himself."

A series of footsteps disrupted their conversation, as somebody appeared to be stumbling down the hallway. Joker appeared and stopped at the door, with his head bowed and his hat once again covering his face. "Liara," he muttered, "I need someone to talk to. And to probably set my bones when I punch the wall."

The blue-skinned Asari strode across the room and walked Joker towards an empty room. An uncomfortable silence fell over the room as they left, as everyone tried to determine how a conversation with Shepard could have left Joker in such a state.

Clearing her throat, Miranda turned towards Tali and declared, "Well, you should probably speak to him now. I want to make sure he gets plenty of rest. I know everyone else wants to see him as well, but he's only just begun recovery and he needs to sleep. I didn't want him to even speak to two people, but he overrode me."

The two women travelled down the hallway until Miranda stopped before a door guarded by two Krogan soldiers and managed by a pair of doctors, one Salarian and one human. The soldiers nodded at Miranda and stepped aside, and she gestured towards the door. Tali took a deep breath, and activated the door slide.

Shepard looked up as the door slid open, and smiled at the sight of a Quarian in a purple enviro-suit entering the room. She strode across the room to sit on the bed, and tenderly ran a hand over his burned face and what remained of his cropped hair.

"Kee'lah," she murmured in shock – Miranda had apparently not prepared her for how visible some of the damage would be. "Damn this suit," she muttered. They both knew that her opening her suit to touch Shepard with her bare skin would immediately expose her to enough germs to kill her, even in a moderately clean hospital.

They sat together for a minute, simply enjoying each other's presence, until Tali broke the silence. "What happened?"

Shepard paused, looked away, took a breath and turned back to her. He began, "The Illusive Man was waiting for us, and he shot Anderson. He thought that he had found a way to control the Reapers, but it backfired, and he was their slave. We managed to show him that, and he killed himself to escape them. But the wound killed Anderson, and then when I tried to activate the Crucible…" He paused, searching for words.

"Just talk to me. I'm here for you – just like you always are for us," she replied, giving his hand a gentle squeeze.

He gave her a brief smile as he continued, "When the Crucible docked with the Citadel, and activated the Catalyst, it – it spoke to me. Do you remember that boy I told you about? The one I saw die when the Reapers took Earth, and the one who kept returning to my nightmares?" When Tali nodded, he explained, "It looked like him – some sort of projection it used to talk to me. I had to be hallucinating that part, from a concussion or blood loss or something – there's no reason for it to have used that."

A cough racked his body, and he halted his story to manage it. Tali crossed the room to bring him water, which he thankfully accepted. "Even with indoctrination, the Reapers can't read our minds. I think you're right – that projection didn't have a form, and you just saw one familiar in it. What did it tell you?"

Taking a moment to recover, Shepard resumed his story. "It explained that the Reapers were created to try to deal with the problem of organics always creating machines – machines that would rise up and destroy their creators. The solution they found was to wipe them out, use them to build a Reaper, and have that Reaper hold the entire knowledge, culture, and history of their civilization. And the Crucible had offered new solutions – ones that it offered to me. I could do what the Illusive couldn't, and control the Reapers. I could give up my life to make everything in the galaxy part machine, part organic – a sort of synthesis. Or I could destroy the Reapers – and every sentient machine and AI along with them." He closed his eyes in pain at the memory.

Tali cocked her head to the side and said, "And you chose to destroy them. Why?"

Shepard looked away as he spoke. "I couldn't control them. The Reapers have caused too much harm, and that kind of power would be too much for anyone person to have. I don't care how much people might trust me – it wouldn't be right. As for the Synthesis idea – it sounded too good. Just have everyone immediately understand each other. Our differences are too important to who we are – as great as it might be to have everyone agree and understand each other, it seemed like it would take too much out of us. The problem with destroying them was that it would also kill EDI and the Geth. After all the work we had just done to reunite them with your people, to finally achieve peace – it didn't seem fair. But it was the best of the three options. I hated it, but I couldn't take that much power for myself, and the other answer just sounded like a fairy tale."

Tali turned her gaze towards the door. "That's why you wanted to see Joker – you wanted to tell him, to apologize. It didn't look like he took it well," she mused.

"No. He didn't completely blame me, but it still hurt him."

After a moment of silence, Tali put her hand on her beloved's cheek and turned his gaze toward her. "I understand why you chose it. It's obvious that you're hurting, but I trust you – it was the best of three poor choices. So why are you hurting? I've seen you struggle with decisions like this in the past, but this – this is different. Talk to me."

He sighed, "I don't even know where to start. I know it's war, and that people were going to die, but it just – it all feels like too much."

They sat in silence for a moment, thinking. Tali looked up and asked, "Why are you so set on saving so many lives? In our time together, I've seen your dedication. You go above and beyond to always save as many people as possible. You fought to make sure we didn't hurt the mind-controlled colonists on Theros, you spared the last of the Rachni, you undid the Krogan Genophage, you brought peace to the Geth and the Quarians – and those are the big ones. Everytime you have the chance to spare a life, you take it. By now you must have saved thousands of lives at the least. You've never told me why it matters so much to you, beyond the obvious moral value of every life."

Shepard allowed a small smile to cross his face as he was reminded of the many people he has had the pleasure to help. The smile faded as his mind drifted back, trying to determine what moment in his time had determined his dedication to saving as many of the lives he met as possible. A cloud passed over his eyes as he muttered, "Mindoir and Elysium."

"Oh," was all Tali could muster in reply at the name of Shepard's birthplace, a colony where Batarian slavers had butchered the populace and his family, and the place where Shepard's legend began, where he led an incredible defense against more Batarian slavers.

"Those moments are what shaped me," he continued. "The moment where I knew the pain of losing everyone and everything you hold dear, and the first time that I kept anyone from experiencing that kind of pain. Everything after that just helped to reinforce that – to show me that I had chosen the correct path. Keeping everyone safe is what I live for. And that's why I hate having destroyed the Geth and EDI – I wanted to minimize casualties in this war, and to have an entire species and a close friend be part of them – it hurts. It hurts so much." He closed his eyes and leaned back against the bed.

"What else could you have done Shepard? If you didn't use the Crucible, the Reaper fleet would have killed all of us. And you're right – nobody should have control over those things, and that – what did you call it? Synthesis? It just sounds strange. You made the only choice that you could have. Yes, it hurts Joker and the rest of the crew to have lost EDI, and my people will mourn the Geth – especially after everything we lost in bringing our peoples back together. But you will be forgiven. There was no better way, and I will stand with you. You made the right choice. It will hurt, but we'll live. You remember my teams on Freedom's Progress and Haestrom? Almost none of them made it out. It hurt – it still does – but I've honored their sacrifice, and learned from it. You haven't lost many people for a long time – I'm here to help you with it though. You are the greatest hero in the galaxy – and while we all can make mistakes, this was not a mistake. You did the right thing!"

Shepard stared at her for a moment before grinning like a madman and placing his forehead against hers. "Thank you," he muttered. "That's exactly what I needed to hear. I haven't forgiven myself yet, but I will try to find a way. As long as I have you here with me, I'll be all right."

The two sat there together in silence, holding and comforting each other as they prepared to move into a new world – one hopefully with far less violence than what their lives had just held.


End file.
